


Mission Failed

by Melime



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Community: femslashficlets, Dragon Age Quest: Protect Clan Lavellan, F/F, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 08:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10805664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime
Summary: Clan Lavellan was dead, and she didn’t want to blame Josephine for failing.





	Mission Failed

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Português brasileiro available: [Missão Falhou](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10805682) by [Melime GreenLeaf (Melime)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime%20GreenLeaf)



> Written for the [femslashficlets](http://femslashficlets.dreamwidth.org/) community, challenge #019 - home.

She didn’t want to blame Josephine for what happened, but that was easier said than done. Her home was gone, just like that, because she wasn’t there to protect it, and because she trusted Josephine to find a way to keep them safe for her.

Ellana had never even been apart from her clan before the conclave. The clan Lavellan was everything to her before her life was turned upside down by humans who thought she was some kind of savior, and ignored the fact she didn’t believe in their god, or that she had any connection to their prophet or whatever they preferred to call Andraste. She knew she could use her mark to help people and save Thedas, so that’s what she decided to do, but she never, not even for one second, believed that she was serving Andraste in doing so.

She preferred to be called Inquisitor over Herald, even though she hated both titles and would much rather be called Ellana, but not even her closest friends seemed willing to call her that. Not even Josephine did, and she fought Josephine’s fiacé for her hand, that was supposed to mean something. But they all saw her as this otherworldly figure, and tried to distance her as much as possible from her origins.

She was a mage, but no one hesitated to talk ill of mages in front of her, even asking for her to agree with them as if there was any possibility that a Dalish mage, the first of her clan for that matter, would agree that her kind should be stolen from their families - or worse, freely and eagerly given by families wishing to rid themselves of what they saw as a dangerous burden, a monster - and locked away for the rest of their lives. She had never stepped foot inside a circle, but she heard enough about what went on in there, and what she heard wasn’t pretty. Before everything happened, the war and the conclave and the rifts, she used to think of one day becoming Keeper and offering solace for escaped elven mages, even though there were many Dalish that saw the alienage elves as less than them.

She was Dalish, but everyone kept insisting that she had to believe in Andraste, that she was somehow proof of Andraste’s powers. They didn’t even care about what she thought, what she believed in, just judged her and complained every time she reminded them that their god wasn’t her god, trying to force her to change her mind, to abandon her culture, as if it meant nothing.

Ellana had a life before the Inquisition, a happy life that she hoped to someday return to. The Inquisition couldn’t last forever, and would probably not last more than a few years, and she wanted to return home when that was over. But now she didn’t have a home anymore.

Rationally, she knew that if she had been home with the others, she would just have been killed. It was unlikely that she would singlehandedly be able to change what happened, as she was a skilled mage, but still far from the level of the Keeper. Still, not being there seemed wrong. Her clan died, so she should have died with them. She was a Lavellan too, and there was no reason for her to be there when no one else was. Once again, she had survived a massacre by sheer dumb luck, and she couldn’t accept how that made her feel. Twice a survivor just for being someplace she didn’t belong, it was wrong on so many levels she couldn’t even begin to describe it.

She didn’t want to blame Josephine, because she already blamed herself enough, so much so that she didn’t want to go out and do everything that she was supposed to do. Not just her entire family - mother, the mage that first taught her that what they had was a gift and not a curse, father, the hunter that taught her about respecting all life no matter how small, brother, who looked up to her and to whom she taught everything she knew, sister, barely old enough to speak the last time she saw her - but her entire clan, every single person that she knew from the moment she was born until well into her early adulthood, simply gone. And everyone expected her to just go back to business as usual, not even a minute allowed to grieve.

Would they treat her the same if she weren’t Dalish? If the Inquisitor, their so called Herald of Andraste, had been a human and a warrior, who lost her family, no, her entire city because of a mistake made by her lover, would she be expected to continue working? Was her heritage the only reason why her pain didn’t matter?

They didn’t even send her a message to tell her what had happened. Josephine just waited for her to be back from one of her missions and then told her that the nobles had killed her entire clan, just like that. Ellana didn’t blame her for thinking that her solution was the best, nor for convincing Ellana of that, even though now she suspected that Leliana’s plan would have been better. No, Ellana didn’t blame Josephine for that, but she did blame her, blamed all of her so called friends, for treating this as a small, inconsequential incident.

She lost her home, and no one cared, no one understood. And it was hard not to resent them, especially when she made such an effort to understand all of their struggles. She lost her home, and she was now all alone, no place to return. She would have to learn to continue living her life without them now. At least now a future where she didn’t survive the ill effects of the anchor didn’t seem so tragic after all. What was the point of surviving if she didn’t have a home to return to?


End file.
